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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

These Are Some Of My Favourite Things ...

The movie that formed the soundtrack to my formative years, apart from Grease, must be The Sound Of Music. It was such a treat. I watched it recently with my daughter and whilst I was shedding tears and emotionally daubing my face, my daughter seemed to find it boring and preferred to watch Sing or The Secret Life Of Pets. How did that happen? I thought the Sound Of Music would be intergenerationally adored and revered. That I would go on to watch it with my grandchildren, still crying. I would sing to them as we all lay in bed:

Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels

Doorbells and sleigh bells

And schnitzel with noodles

Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

Silver-white winters that melt into springs

These are a few of my favorite things

Sadly, life is not as romantic as the movies. I recall reading about the real Von Trapp family in my adult years and it seemed a far stretch from Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews. We can kick a few things into place in life, but the truth is life is often far less glamorous.

Which brings me to my point. As I age and as my body seems to be having a hard time dealing with the long term effects of gravity and indulgence, one of the few things we can do is to pepper up our ensembles so that we can create the theatre of what we'd like to look like as opposed to what we really look like.

At a wedding recently it struck me that if we were all forced to undress and go nude, I'd have been inclined not to attend. The art of clothes and wearing them well allows dumplings like myself to carry a certain swagger, maybe even a drop of rock n roll.

All this I say because I want to mention a few of my favourite things which helped on this trip.

The evening suit I wore I made with P Johnson tailors nearly two years ago. It still looks stunning and it's such a good tuxedo for spring/summer, half lined so its nice a cool as the evening heats up on a wedding dance floor. The bow tie is our limited edition Great Wave Off Kanagawa silk, homage to Hokusai and his wood block prints. The shirt is one of ours featuring a swiss cotton marcella bib. The pochette is Charvet which I bought from Richard's in Connecticut on the day of the wedding.

As we get older the incentive to dress more elegantly is in the fact that your body doesn't look good in a hessian sack anymore, leave that for the 20 year olds. These days, a well spretzzed pochette, a hand-tied bow tie, a suit that hides some of your girth - these are things that are will carry you when your knees won't....

I would be inclined now to change those words of Julie Andrews to something like: